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Zooey Deschanel Wants To Inspire Young Girls To Be Strong

Zooey Deschanel is trying to be a ray of light in a sea of negative energy. The actress tells Marie Clarie’s new edition that she’s tired of being mocked for speech patterns, thinks that people are too dismissive nowadays and dishes on her new inspirational website.

The “Almost Famous” star vents it all in the September issue, which hits news stands on August 13th.

On people today: “My theory is that people in this day and age want to dismiss things. So they want to be able to dismiss you. They say, ‘You don’t belong, you don’t deserve this because here’s why, and let me find an intellectual argument for why you wearing pink or cuff sleeves or a bow makes you not worthy of your accomplishments. Everything you’ve done doesn’t matter because you wore the wrong thing or you speak in a way that’s feminine or you identify yourself as feminine.’ And I just think that’s bullshit. And smart people are doing it, and that’s surprising to me. I’ll give them being smart, but they’re being very shortsighted. It’s just attacking who I am. A lot of times it doesn’t have to do with what I get paid to do. It has to do with, ‘Oh, you stupid person.’ Even I get slammed and overwhelmed by how negative the Internet can get, and I’m an adult. I don’t pay any mind to it, but it’s pretty shocking how when you give people anonymity – it’s like the worst of human nature.”

On her speech patterns: “I became aware that people were criticizing the way I speak, which seems weird to me. I speak the way I speak, and I am an intelligent person. Sometimes I lean into California-speak more for entertainment value. It’s not that I can’t live in a world without the word like.”

On her website, HelloGiggles.com: “I just felt it’s important to teach young girls to be strong people, to not think, ‘I can’t do this because I’m worried about what people will say’. There are worse consequences, but online negativity stops people from being creative, part of which is having bad ideas as well as good ideas. When somebody says, ‘That idea’s stupid,’ you stop your flow of ideas. We can’t have the next generation be so afraid because they have been attacked.”